Located on the south-side of Chicago, Chicago State University (CSU) is a liberal arts, public institution with a predominantly African-American student body. CSU serves the highest proportion of black students of all public universities in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa-Wisconsin contiguous four-state region where it awards the largest number of baccalaureate degree to this population. As an urban comprehensive university, CSU faces both the opportunity and the challenge of educating students who are mostly raised and educated within a ten-mile radius of the campus and are products of both an economically-disadvantaged background and a high- school education which may not have prepared them well for college-level work. The majority of CSU undergraduates are first-generation of college goers. The CSU MBRS RISE Program is a response to the NIH initiative to improve significantly the research training capabilities of minority and minority-serving institutions as a means to address the need to increase diversity in the biomedical research workforce. In response to this initiative the core goals of the CSU-RISE Program are to increase the number of students served by the Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Physics Departments to continue their education on to biomedical graduate programs, and also to ensure the quality of their preparation. The Program consists of hierarchical undergraduate training activities that will prepare them for PhD-level studies and biomedical research careers. By the completion of the program students will have: (i) completed a rigorous summer training workshop in which they learn the basics of what it is to be a research scientist, (ii) had several real research experiences, (iii) written, defended and executed a hypothesis-driven research plan, (iv) prepared and delivered at least one presentation at each of a regional and national research conference, (v) participated in a grant application peer review panel, (vi) completed at least a semester of service as a teaching assistant for entry-level courses in their discipline which will provide training and perspective for their future role as TAs in graduate school, and (vii) developed competitive applications to several graduate programs. The ultimate goal of the program is to achieve a minimum of 50% of program alumni entering biomedical graduate programs. The CSU RISE Program along with other externally- funded research programs are designed, in concert, to provide expanded resources for minorities to train for biomedical research careers by development of student opportunities and biomedical research capabilities of the CSU RISE Departments. The continued funding of the RISE Program will accelerate the realization of the institutional vision of becoming a major focal point of opportunities for under-represented minorities in biomedical training in the Chicago metropolitan area and thereby contributing materially to the goals of achieving diversity in the scientific workforce in the Midwest and the nation.